Beyond the Short Term: Transportation Asset Management for Long-Term Sustainability, Accountability and Performance

Information Needs for Asset Management

After leadership, sound information and analysis is the
single more critical factor in good Asset Management. It is difficult to
overstate the importance of information to the many decisions which must be
made at the program level, the project level and the organizational strategy
level.

Needed information for the deployment of Asset Management
falls into at least three major categories. They are:

Organizational Direction Information - Is the
organization's commitment to asset management clear? Has the organization
bought in to the asset management approach? Does it understand the asset
management approach? Is it cascading the approach actively through the
organization?

This category of information is closely aligned with the
Leadership component mentioned earlier. It is this information about
Organizational Direction which most directly involves the leader.

Organizational Competency Information - Does the
organization have the technical and strategic competency to perform asset
management functions? Does it have long-term goals and short-term objectives?
Can it conduct Resource-Allocation Tradeoffs and long-term forecasting? If the
agency is only beginning to adopt preventive maintenance, do the front-line
workers have the required training, equipment and materials? Do the
information personnel have the tools and training to collect the needed data?
Does it have performance measures? What is the competency gap to embrace asset
management?

Organizational Asset Data - This is the category of
data that is most often recognized as essential to asset management. In fact, a
common misconception about asset management is that it involves only technical,
computer programs such as Pavement or Bridge Management Systems. In fact,
asset management requires all three types of information listed here but it is
the Organizational Asset Data that is the most technical, detailed and expensive
to acquire.

Organizational Direction Information

Adopting or improving Asset Management approaches is about
changing existing practices and implementing new ones. An exercise in Change
Management is required. The theory of change management fills volumes of text
books but in the case of Asset Management a few general principals apply.
Understanding if these principals are at work will reveal a good deal to the
leadership about whether the Organizational Direction is sufficient to ensure a
successful transition to Asset Management or a successful evolution to the next
stage of it. An evaluation of the following types of information can provide
insight into whether the Organizational Direction is clear.

The Case for Change Information - To change an organization
the leadership must clearly state the new direction and make a clear case for
change. In "Re-Engineering the Corporation," Hammer [4] emphasizes
the need to make the case before an organizational transformation can occur.
Hammer and Champy say the most compelling argument is when the leader clearly
and factually notes the inevitable failure that will occur should the
organization continue on its present path. In instances where asset management
is lacking, the failures can be failure to achieve public support, failure to
sustain infrastructure at acceptable conditions or the failure to receive
additional resources without documented best practices. Probably the most
important information needed to begin an asset management transition is the information
leadership provides about the where, how and why the institution is changing.

Modes of Communication - Practitioners who measure
human communication note that most communication is non-verbal. The most
powerful non-verbal messages are body language, tone of voice and degree of
engagement. These same principals apply in terms of leaders communicating
asset management to a large agency. Organizations are like people in that they
intuitively understand the importance of the non-verbal messages that are
transmitted along with the verbal ones. If the leadership issues memos about
asset management but does not actively and personally engage in it, they are
sending a powerful message that asset management is not truly important. To
assess if the information is in place to affect a change in organizational
attitude, the leadership must assess the tone, tenor, quality and sincerity of
the messages it is sending to the work force. The leadership's active, personal
engagement with asset management most effectively communicates its importance.

Sending and Receiving Information - Communication
requires both the sending and the receiving of information. Merely sending
information without ensuring it is received is broadcasting, but not
necessarily communicating. To be understood, information must come in a
fashion, context and vocabulary that can be understood. Discussions of Asset
Management and Performance Management may be appropriate to planning staff or
engineers accustomed to dealing with abstract systems or models. For front-line
workers who are realistically focused upon the issue of the day, such terms may
not be effective. Instead, it may necessary to speak in plain terms about
better strategies to repair pavements, to sustain guardrail or to improve the
condition of signage. Direct, concrete, unadorned examples about how
maintenance forces fit into asset management are important. To evaluate the
clarity of a message, the "ball cap and flannel shirt" test can be applied.
Would what we are saying be relevant to the front-line workers in ball caps and
flannel shirts who are conducting our day-to-day maintenance? If the
leadership's message does not pass the "ball cap and flannel shirt" test, they
may be creating an information gap.

Official Forms of Communication - In a formal
organization many actions are influenced by legally sanctioned documents and
processes. These include position descriptions, annual evaluations, promotional
exams, a table of organization, union agreements and formal policies. Although
a good deal of research has been conducted on how organizations operate in
contravention or direct circumvention of these devices, they still play an
important role. If the leadership wants to convey the importance of adopting
asset management in an organization, it should evaluate whether these formal
forms of information reflect the new organizational commitment. If leadership
wants managers to adopt asset management, it should review whether such
direction is clear in the managers' position descriptions, annual evaluations
and in their divisional work responsibilities.

Organizational Success Information - To embrace an
on-going change, the workforce must see and experience that the change is
actually occurring. To continually communicate the evolving deployment of the
asset management direction, the leadership should ensure that it is providing
newsletters, websites, group meetings and other forms of feedback. This
feedback needs to communicate continuously about the success achieved and the
stages about to be undertaken in the organization's deployment of asset
management.

Organizational Competency Information

If the organization possessed all the competencies necessary
to conduct asset management, it probably would be doing so already. The fact
that asset management is not fully deployed indicates that a competency gap
exists. Assessing the size of this institutional competency gap and then
devising a plan to close it is among the most important types of information
needed to deploy asset management. The effort to assess the competency gap and
then to close it, is in effect, an Asset Management Implementation Plan. The
components of the Implementation Plan to assess and then close the competency
gap would include at least the following elements.

The Strategic Basis for Asset Management - Asset
Management is like Performance Management in that both are strategic processes
intended to direct daily activities so that they contribute to the achievement
of long-term institutional goals. The primary strategic foundation for asset management
tends to be strategic, long-term organizational goals which include the
following elements:

The organization values "continuous improvement" and "institutional knowledge management" which means it constantly evaluates its results, learns from them and disseminates that learning throughout the organization.

If a strategic foundation for Asset Management is missing in
an organization, the leadership should consider developing a strategic plan or
articulating a strategic vision which clearly states its long-term goals in support
of asset management.

Short-Term Objectives and Performance Measures- Most
strategic processes evaluate their own success by devising short-term
objectives and performance measures which are deployed as incremental steps
toward the long-term goals. The achieving of the short-term performance
measures ensures progress toward the goals. Failure to achieve the short-term
performance measures triggers assessment or "learning" as to what needs to
change in order to achieve the desired success.

If an agency lacks clear performance measures and a process
to track them it probably lacks a critical element of Asset Management. Steady
progress toward implementing projects, maintenance treatments and preventive
maintenance operations are essential if the organization is to attain its
multi-year, long-term Asset Management goals. Performance measures and a
process to track them generally are essential.

Scenario Forecasting - One of the primary questions
that asset management answers is, "Will the system be better or worse in the
future as a result of what we are doing today?" To answer that question the
planning functions need to be able to extrapolate different programmatic
strategies and funding levels to determine their costs and benefits. The
agency will need to evaluate different funding levels and treatment strategies.
These forecasts can be quite complex and rely on state-of-the computer systems
in a mature asset management organization or they can consist of straight-line
extrapolations of spreadsheet and database information. The sophistication of
the forecasts tends to increase with the maturity of the asset management
program. However, an essential piece of information necessary will be to
determine the competency of the department's scenario-forecasting capabilities.

Workforce Skills - People from the strategic planning
offices to the front-line maintenance forces may well need new skills to
implement asset management. If the agency intends to increase its emphasis upon
preventive maintenance it must ensure that work teams, inspectors, designers
and material testers are familiar with crack sealing, chip seals, thin overlays
and other pavement preventive treatments. If the department has long relied
primarily on reactive overlays, these preventive-maintenance treatments may not
be widely understood.

Benefit-Cost Skills - A wider reliance upon
benefit/cost analyses at both the program level and project level may require
new institutional skills. Tools to easily conduct benefit/cost analyses so that
they can be conducted on a wide array of program and project options probably
will need to be provided.

An Asset Management Champion - One of the most
important requirements is to have an asset management champion at a high level
of the organization. If asset management is being driven by a Commission, a
Legislature or by the CEO, it probably has an automatic champion. If those
conditions do not exist, a champion should be appointed and the higher in the
organization the better. This champion in many instances is supported by a
broad-ranging committee representing all major departmental areas. This
arrangement can spread the advocacy widely across the organization.

Organizational Asset Data

One of the common fallacies about asset management is that
its practice is dependent upon state-of-the-art enterprise-wide computer
systems. Such systems are extremely desirable and they are powerful adjuncts
to mature asset management processes. However, as mentioned in past sections
they are optional while other types of data are absolutely essential for asset
management. The following section generically describes the type of basic
asset data that an organization will require. It should be stressed that the
acquisition of sufficient data and information for asset management is a
continuous journey, not a point of departure for the asset management effort.
"Begin with what you have" is repeatedly stressed in asset management guidance
worldwide. Spread-sheets, data bases and simple forecast curves are often the
foundations of asset management information systems.

Organizational Asset Data - The International
Infrastructure Management Manual identifies the following categories of data
that underlie sound Asset Management. [5] They include:

Asset Inventories - These are the basic data
regarding the bridges, pavements, maintenance appurtenances, traffic control
devices, equipment and facilities which comprise the total inventory of the
department's physical assets. Generally, this information includes at least
current condition and location information. Preferably, it would include
past-performance history and detailed structural condition data so that
remaining service life can be predicted. Although it may simplistic, just
knowing what assets exist and where they are can is important. Some assets such
as culverts, under drains, signs, traffic signals and guardrail have been
lacking in traditional asset inventories, which focused upon pavements and
bridges.

Level of Service Data - Data as to the desired level
of service compared to the existing level of service is clearly desirable in
Asset Management information systems. When unit cost data is added to the
existing and desired level of service information, financial gap analyses can
be conducted. In addition, ad hoc trend analysis and exception reports can be
conducted to look for trends in asset deficiencies, whether they occur
geographically or programmatically.

Predicted Future Demand Data - This data is often
volume-based such as traffic forecasts. This data is important for forecasting
future demands, such as loadings on pavements or bridges.

Remaining Useful Life Forecasts - If the preceding
data exists, it generally is possible to forecast the Remaining Useful Life of
assets. The remaining useful life can predict failure scenarios and is
fundamental to accurate forecasts of financial needs.

Risk-Analysis Data - The risk-sensitivity of items
such as fracture-critical bridges or traffic control devices is quite high.
Rather than accept high-degrees of risk regarding these asset classes, the
desired asset data would include indicators of risk for structures or other
asset items which need to be maintained with higher degrees of adequacy than
would items of lesser risk such as low-volume rural pavements.

Treatment-Sensitivity Data - The relative effects of
various treatments upon the remaining service life of assets is important and
desirable data. This data preferably is derived from statistical analysis of a
vast array of past examples but it can be generated by engineering judgment or
"rules of thumb" in early Asset Management programs.

Benefit/Cost Data - Closely related to
treatment-sensitivity data is benefit/cost data which can be used to
generalized the return-on-investment of various treatments or strategies.

Fiscal Forecasts - Forecasts of predicted revenue
based upon likely economic and political scenarios are necessary to evaluate
potential investment options.

The Sensitivity of Maintenance and Oper-ations - Tradeoffs
in capital programs often are made in Asset Management as decision makers
evaluate tradeoffs between asset classes such as pavements, bridges or
maintenance items. Another class of trade-off decision is how to allocate
maintenance and operations resources toward the maintenance of assets. Decisions
on how to deploy people, equipment and materials relies upon the expected
sensitivity of those resources when they are applied to the improvement of
various assets.

Analysis for Asset Management

According to the FHWA Office of Asset Management the following
analyses are the basic ones which will be conducted upon the Asset Management
information systems mentioned above.

What is the state of my assets?

What do I own?

Where is it?

What condition is it in?

What is its remaining useful life?

What is its remaining economic value?

What is my required level of service?

What is the demand for services by stakeholders?

Are there regulatory requirements I must meet?

What is my actual performance?

Which assets are critical to sustained performance?

How does it fail? How can it fail?

What is the likelihood of failure?

What does it cost to repair?

What are the consequences of failure?

What are my best "Operations and Maintenance" and "Capital Improvement" investment strategies?

What alternative management options exist?

Which are the most feasible for my organization?

What is my best long-term funding strategy?

What revenue will I have?

What is my investment gap or surplus to meet asset condition goals?

What would be my optimum mix of:

Preventive Maintenance

Reactive Maintenance

Rehabilitation

Replacement

If I cannot afford my optimum mix, what is the best mix of fixes I can afford?

Oregon Asset Management Case Study

The following Oregon DOT case study illustrates how one agency addressed the three types of organizational information needs as it evolved its Asset Management strategies. The Oregon DOT developed Organizational Direction information which served to focus the agency staff upon the path of Asset Management. It adopted both an Asset Management Program Plan and an Asset Management communication plan to fully convey its organizational direction to the work force. It gathered its Organizational Competency Information by assessing and then enhancing its organizational structure to support its Asset Management efforts. Finally, it also developed a strategic approach to producing the Organizational Asset Data its needs to fully capitalize on Asset Management for a wide range of assets. Although the Oregon DOT did not approach its Asset Management evolution primarily as a information exercise, the steps it did take serve to illustrate the three types of information that an agency needs to consider as it adopts Asset Management.

The Oregon DOT case study also illustrates how an agency can use its Asset Management system to generate highway performance information to satisfy statewide performance measurement efforts.

Summary of Asset Management Development in Oregon

The development of Asset Management is often an evolutionary
process within an agency and it was so at the Oregon Department of
Transportation (ODOT). The roots of the ODOT Asset Management efforts can be
traced to department policies which began as early as 1988 to set targets and
to measure performance of the department's highway infrastructure assets. The
agency set desired levels of service and began tracking its performance toward
achieving those levels. Because the setting of performance targets is a common
activity in both Asset Management and Performance Management, ODOT's early
experience in setting performance targets allowed it to adapt more readily over
the years to the practice of Asset Management as that became the agency's
preferred approach to managing its highway infrastructure. Concurrently,
through the years, the agency improved its systems for pavement management,
bridge management and safety management. It also used the HERS-ST program to
help determine optimum investment levels between asset classes. Eventually,
the various performance measurement efforts combined with the agency's embrace
of management systems led it to an Asset Management system that now has formal
structures, a formal mission and formal policies.

As other agencies have found, the DOT's evolving Asset
Management system could produce the data necessary to satisfy the state's
desire for transportation performance metrics as part of a statewide
Performance Management program. In a collaboration of the transportation
department's Asset Management process and the state's performance measurement
process, the ODOT performance targets for its transportation assets are tied
directly to the state-level performance measures. These measures are presented
annually to the state Legislature for review during the budgeting process.
[6]

The transportation measures are tied strategically to four over-arching agency
goals of:

(1) Improve Travel Safety in Oregon,

(2) Move People and Goods
Efficiently,

(3) Support Livability and Economic Prosperity, and

(4) Provide
Excellent Customer Services.

As a result, a direct linkage can be drawn between the Oregon DOT's asset management practices and the practices' contribution to the achievement of statewide performance goals.

Oregon DOT officials said this long history of strategically approaching the measuring and managing of transportation asset conditions has
given the agency a firm sense of its organizational direction regarding Asset Management. The agency continues to evolve from setting infrastructure performance measures, to developing management systems to embarking on full implementation of an Asset Management program. Representatives from a majority of ODOT program areas are now involved in the decision making process. At the same time, the Legislature and the state executive branch can have confidence in the outputs from the Asset Management program to provide the information they seek to assure that transportation performance is sound.

Achieving Organizational Direction for Asset Management in Oregon

As the Oregon DOT developed its Asset Management processes, it became increasingly clear and emphatic in communicating its asset management
direction to its workforce, to the Legislature and to the public at large. The agency's formal evolution to embracing Asset Management included the adoption in January, 2006, of the "ODOT Asset Management Strategic Plan." That was followed by other systematic efforts to communicate the organizational direction including an Asset Management Program Plan, an Asset Management Implementation Plan and an Asset Management Communications Plan. All were intended to clearly and systematically convey that the organization was making a further, evolutionary shift in refining and enhancing its Asset Management practices.

The Strategic Plan says, "ODOT adopted the goals and principles of the AASHTO Transportation Asset Management Guide and is currently
attempting to integrate the process of Asset Management into its every-day business processes and decision-making at all levels, and across all functions, of the organization. Its Strategic Plan includes Figure 15 which illustrates how Asset Management influences Preservation, Operations and Capital Improvements through the systematic use of data, reporting systems, decision structures and resource-allocation decisions.

The ODOT Asset Management Strategic Plan described the then-current state of Asset Management in Oregon - including its weaknesses - and laid out a concrete plan for how the agency would improve its Asset Management practices. The Strategic Plan said that the success of Oregon's Asset Management efforts would depend on whether it developed a program that
met the business needs of the various core business areas of the department
including management, planning, project development, operations and
maintenance. It intended to make Asset Management the foundation to monitor the
transportation system and to steer the preservation, improvement and
replacement of its assets. It notes that the agency will build upon its strong
management systems.

"The significant difference (between Asset Management
and the other management systems) is that, in many respects, existing ODOT
management systems are used in a "tactical" manner, to identify
specific projects. Asset Management is a "strategic" analysis and
decision-making approach that selects projects and allocates funding by looking
at a broad range of assets and their performance in the system as a
whole," said the ODOT Asset Management Strategic Plan.

The Strategic Plan goes on to spell out the Core Principles
to guide the organizational embrace of Asset Management. Those principles
include that:

Asset Management will add value and support the mission of the department;

It will be done well and will be based upon the national and international best practices;

Asset Management will build upon ODOT's existing good work of its management systems;

Current efforts under way to gather and improve data will be supported;

Asset Management will be part of the department's daily work function;

Asset Management will use trusted and reliable data;

It will be a management process that is regularly monitored with performance measures of the effectiveness of cross-asset decision-making, data monitoring, trade-off analysis reporting structure and other key elements;

It will support broad-based funding allocation decisions;

It will allow readily available asset reports;

It will foster cross-asset communication.

The Strategic Plan candidly said in 2006 that, at that time,
the agency's approach fell short of those comprehensive objectives. It noted
that its data was contained in between 60 and 70 different data bases which did
not allow the comprehensive analysis that the agency desired. To be
strategically prepared for Asset Management, the Strategic Plan said the agency
must implement processes to integrate capital and linear asset data into an
Asset Management system. The system must then be strategically used to make
policy, program and funding allocation decisions.

To achieve its strategic ends, the Plan set three goals,
each with several objectives and strategies. The goals were:

Develop and implement a robust Asset Management Data Collection and Storage system that is consistent, unduplicated, understandable, reliable and accurate;

Develop and implement an integrated, useable, and reliable Asset Management system that provides information and analysis for life-cycle cost management of ODOT assets so that funding allocation decisions are broad-based across various asset categories.

That plan says in part, "The Asset Management Program
Plan has been developed to provide interested stakeholders a synopsis of Oregon
Department of Transportation efforts to implement a strategic and pro-active
Asset Management Program for all linear transportation assets under its
responsibility."

The agency adopted a formal Vision for its Asset Management
efforts which is: "ODOT's assets are managed strategically by utilizing integrated
and systematic data collection, storage, analysis and reporting standards on a
broad range of transportation system assets, optimizing funding and life-cycle
decisions for operations, maintenance and construction business
functions."

Its Asset Management Mission is:"Recognizing that
Asset Management is a process or methodology that ODOT can use to
cost-effectively deliver an efficient, effective, reliable and safe
transportation service, the mission of ODOT Asset Management is:

to put in place the plans, people, processes, and products that enable ODOT to implement accepted Asset Management practices in a timely and cost-effective manner, and;

to continually monitor and improve Asset Management implementation over time.

We do this so that the benefits to ODOT in the areas of
accountability, communication, risk management and financial efficiency can be
realized." [7]

ODOT's efforts to link "plans, people, process and products" to advance its Asset
Management practices is reflected in the multi-disciplinary approach evident in
its Asset Management Program Plan, and as illustrated in Figure 2, taken from
the Strategic Plan. The Program Plan notes that the Asset Management efforts
will build upon the Bridge Management System, the Pavement Management System,
the Safety Management System but it also notes that its efforts must extend
more broadly to include the organizational structure, the policies, the
standards and processes of the agency. To advance the Asset Management Program,
partnerships and collaboration must be forged with cross-cutting units within
the department and across the districts. Areas as diverse as data collection,
data management, data warehousing, planning, the project delivery system and
maintenance need to be communicating and working in concert to advance the
agency's Asset Management program, indicates its Asset Management Program Plan.
"...a pro-active Asset Management Program is a key element in the
strategic life-cycle management of these assets. This program must provide resources
to the agency in the form of applications, tools, standards, processes and
guidelines for decision making, data management and communication," says
the Program Plan.

It goes on to identify the responsibilities of key areas
within the department that need to collaborate and work across divisions to
propel the agency along its Asset Management path:

The Technical Services staff will operate the asset management systems, develop design standards and policies, collect data and contribute to decision making about Asset Management;

The Transportation Development Division will provide foundational data such as the statewide transportation plan, and plans for highways, freight, and specific corridors. It also will provide advice to key decision makers such as the Oregon Transportation Commission about programmatic decisions;

The Office of Maintenance and Operations has Asset Management responsibilities for updating design policies and standards and for leading asset maintenance activities;

The regions and districts have responsibility for performing capital improvements, performing maintenance and making operational improvements to the transportation system;

The Information Systems staff collaborates with the department to support Asset Management;

The close collaboration and unified organizational direction
that is essential for Asset Management is evident in the Asset Management
Program Plan's enumeration of roles and responsibilities. Each of six
different functional areas are assigned roles and responsibilities in the
common areas of Program Coordination, Data Collection, Data Management, Data
Analysis and Report and Decision Making. In other words, the various divisions
and units all play a key role in the cross-cutting functions of coordination,
data collection, data management, data analysis and decision making in the
Oregon Asset Management framework.

Change Management and the Asset Management Communication Plan

Obtaining organizational buy-in is one of the primary
concerns during asset management implementation, particularly at early stages.
Without commitment up and down the organization, asset management remains only
a set of principles written down on paper, no matter how elegantly phrased. To
undertake this important component of implementation, the Asset Management
Integration Section of ODOT developed an Asset Management Communication Plan.
The primary goal of this plan was to increase understanding of the ODOT Asset
Management approach. It includes a Change Management Plan, encompassing both
communication and education/training plans.

The Change Management Plan aimed to set and communicate
clear goals for Asset Management implementation, assess and respond to agency
culture, and set up a framework that allows employees to understand how they
fit into agency-wide efforts. One key message emphasized by the integration
team is that asset management has been embraced by senior management.
Demonstrating that the agency's leaders are active supporters of asset
management is an important step in aligning the organization. Executive involvement
in policy guidance and asset management committees further contributes to this
aim.

In addition to the Communication Plan, the organization
created an Asset Management Steering Committee to create a good internal
governance structure. The Steering Committee is composed of staff from Highway,
Information Systems, Motor Carrier, and other divisions. Integration between
the Highway Division and the Transportation Development Division is extensive.

Organizational Competency Information

As seen in the preceding section, the Oregon DOT went to
considerable lengths to ensure there was clear information regarding its
organizational direction for Asset Management. As was also clear, the agency
had a firm understanding of its Organizational Competency gaps regarding Asset
Management. Those primary gaps regarded data availability, flexible data
reporting and the ability to make life-cycle cost decisions at the project and
program levels. In the ODOT Asset Management Implementation Plan, it set about
to close those competency gaps and to provide the asset information it needed
to achieve its Asset Management aspirations. Because its competency gaps
related to data and information, there was a close connection between the final
two types of information needs - the Organizational Competency Information
Needs and the Organizational Asset Data Needs.

Implementation Plan to Close the Competency Gap

The Oregon DOT Implementation Plan lays out a clear approach
to providing the information and analytic tools the agency desires for its
Asset Management maturation. The implementation plan provides the agency
specific steps to take for the successful integration of Asset Management
principles, practices and processes into its every day work. It says that
woven throughout ODOT's Asset Management program is the need for business
processes, communication channels and system enhancements to support the
integration of Asset Management. It appears from the ODOT Asset Management
implementation plan that the agency believes it possesses many strengths in the
management of individual assets but that it perceived a gap in the
"connectedness" of its plans, people, processes and products to make
the cross-asset tradeoffs that it desired. "Well defined roles and responsibilities,
interrelationships within ODOT and external stakeholders and the ability to
maintain a "learning" attitude are all vital attributes for a
successfully institutionalized ODOT Asset Management system," says its
Implementation Plan.

Its Strategic Plan included three broad goals.

Goal 1 was to have a robust Asset Management Data Collection
and Storage System that contains consistent, unduplicated, reliable and current
data. To achieve that, the agency identified the Objective of making data
adequate for both project-level and strategic level decisions. It adopted the
strategy of formally identifying "Business Line System Owners" for
each management system or class of assets. Then the roles and responsibilities
of those owners and their key stakeholders would be identified and documented.

Another strategy to support Goal 1 was to complete a formal
assessment of the data used to support each management system or asset class.
Then policies would be developed to identify what should be collected, how the
data will be defined, how it will be collected, how it will be stored, the
degree of precision it should meet and the practices used to identify the
location of its related asset. In other words, the strategy would adopt a
consistent process to ensure the quality of the asset data collected. A related
strategy is to define a governance structure that has oversight and authority
to ensure adequacy of data-collection efforts.

Goal 2 is to have an automated, flexible and complete Asset
Management Data Reporting System that performs cross-asset analysis and which
monitors the inventory, condition and performance of the assets. To move the
agency toward that goal, it developed strategies to assess existing management
system analysis software, to review key analytic inputs such as construction
price inflation rates, asset deterioration rates and life-cycle models. Another
strategy is to develop tools and processes to incorporate Asset Management
principles into the ODOT planning and project-development processes.

To achieve Goal 3, which is to create a decision process
that focuses on life-cycle management of assets, the agency identified the
steps it needed to take. Among them were to implement Asset Management
principles into the resource-allocation processes, to implement the Asset
Management Communication Plan , to develop an Asset Management Training plan,
and to implement performance measures to support and identify the use of
life-cycle-based decisions.

Collectively, these steps and additional ones which were not
included here, were identified to close the Organizational Competency Gap so
the agency could achieve its Asset Management aspirations.

Developing Organizational Asset Data

Closely tied to the development of the organizational
competency information in Oregon was the effort to provide the third type of
information needed for Asset Management, that is the Organizational Asset Data.
These data consist of the asset inventories, the management systems, and the
related decision-support software, information technology networks and the
human resource capital to fully utilize them. As mentioned earlier, ODOT had
mature and robust individual management systems for pavements, bridges, and
safety programs. However, ODOT identified that it had gaps in how to integrate this
data for cross-asset decision making and trade-off analysis. It also was
concerned that it lacked consistency in the quality of its data because of
differing practices in the collection and storage of them. The third component
of its information-building efforts related to Asset Management was to build
the information systems necessary to support a mature, robust and reliable
Asset Management process.

Asset Management Steering Committee

The enhancement of the Organizational Asset Data was pursued
in a systematic fashion by the Oregon DOT. In its Asset Management Strategic
Plan, it identified the need to create an Asset Management Executive Steering
Committee and to have it coordinate the efforts of other key existing and newly
created panels. These panels represented important practitioners or led
important data-development efforts which were necessary to meet the demanding
data needs which the agency identified. These include:

Oregon Transportation System Steering Committee;

Information Technology Executive Steering Committee;

Community of Interest Committees (IT and Transportation);

Linear Asset Management Steering Committee;

A Technical Services Asset Management Task Force; and,

A GIS Steering Committee.

These panels coordinated the many steps necessary to
complete the ambitious data system tasks which had been identified in the ODOT
Asset Management Strategic Plan. They worked from the comprehensive set of
objectives and strategies in the strategic plan. One data strategy was to
develop a corporate Data Model and System Model that defines the agency's data
and its overall information system. The data strategy efforts included
obtaining the input from asset system owners, asset class owners and key
stakeholders. Included with that effort was development of a gap analysis of
the current versus-the- optimal ODOT data and system for managing the data.

Another significant data initiative identified in the
Strategic Plan was to review the adequacy of data necessary to conduct
cross-asset analysis among major asset classes. The effort involved reviewing
data from the current management systems to determine if they could serve in
the cross-asset analysis. Related to the cross-asset analysis was an
initiative to create a data-improvement plan for each priority class of asset.

The development of an Asset Management Data Reporting System
that is easy to use, reliable and accessible, and which provides current and
accurate condition and performance data, was another Strategic Plan initiative
which was pursued and overseen by the implementation committees. Among the
action items for this task was to perform a cross-asset demonstration project
in preparation for the full development.

A particularly successful data strategy for the Oregon DOT has been the use of Linear Reference Methods (LRMs) across the agency. LRM is a technique used to identify a specific point along a linear feature (e.g., mile point). Through linear referencing, data from legacy management systems can be coordinated by linking all data to specific linear point on the highway network.
LRM combined with the use of Data Warehousing breaks down the barriers between legacy systems which could not be easily coordinated in the past.

The information strategies included attempting to capture data generated during the
planning process and the project-development process and incorporating it into
the asset management data bases. The agency identified the need to efficiently
capture and communicate data during the planning, project development and
construction phases.

Based on needs identified in an asset management pilot
project in one district, data management and integration became the major focus
of ODOT's asset management initiative. TransCOI, the Transportation Community
of Interest, has assumed the role of "Data Council," providing strategic
direction. Products produced by this committee include process guides and
standards for linear asset data collection and field data collection. While the
council began as exclusively committed to asset management, it will extend in
the future to support other initiatives including integrated Systems and Data
Warehousing.

The Asset Management
Integration Section was set up under the Transportation Development Division to
coordinate and facilitate agency-wide asset management efforts. It is working
on developing standards for gathering and storing data and developing tools to
help various business areas manage their assets. The Asset Management
Integration Section serves as a conduit for communication across the agency, in
particular among planning, design, construction, operations and maintenance
business lines.

Decision Support: People and Tools

Although the Oregon DOT has invested heavily in improving
its data systems, it also brings the engineering judgment of its staff into the
decision-making process. For example, pavement leadership in Oregon is careful
to practice a mixed approach to decision support. While systems such as the Pavement
Management System (PMS) are very useful for forecasting, leadership emphasizes the
importance of not discounting expert knowledge from the field. Pavement
management in ODOT relies on both tools and people.

The Statewide Pavement Committee has been in operation for
ten years and meets every two months. Its membership spans the geographic
regions as well as a variety of roles related to pavement. While data drives
decisions made by the committee it also was formed to capture the insight of
the experienced department personnel.

A Way of Doing Business

ODOT leadership measures the Asset Management initiative's
success quite simply: up and down the organization, everyone now understands
that "worst first" is not the answer. This one simple but important concept is
indicative of major progress toward establishing a culture of Asset Management.

Since the development and approval of the Asset Management
Implementation Plan (April 2006), ODOT asset management said the agency
recognized that in order to allow for successful implementation it had to reach
out for wider involvement from all ODOT program areas. This resulted in an
adjustment to the participation of the Asset Management Steering Committee.
Part of the outreach included an effort to integrate and share previous asset
data in an easily accessible format. This includes a tool that was developed to
help employees by improving transportation data availability. The FACS-STIP
(Features, Attributes and Conditions Survey -
Statewide Transportation Improvement Program) Tool offers both a map
interface and a tabular method for getting asset information. For more
information on the Oregon DOT Asset Management program and its efforts please
contact Laura Wipper (Laura.R.Wipper@odot.state.or.us)
or Laura Hansen (Laura.L.Hansen@odot.state.or.us).

'Words of Wisdom' in Developing an Asset Management Process

Leaders at ODOT offer a number of observations that may
prove useful to other agencies at earlier stages in the asset management
development process:

Not everything must be figured out at the start. ODOT has been doing Asset Management for years without calling it that. The next step is to become more strategic.

When ODOT first started performance measurement, it was a separate effort. More success resulted once performance management and Asset Management were viewed as intertwined.

ODOT demonstrated the importance of good tools and data for managing assets by first implementing an Asset Management pilot program in Region 2, District 3.

You are never done - it's a continuous improvement process.

Sophistication of Asset Management can be based on the risk involved for different assets.

There will necessarily be different levels of complexity for different assets. While it is important to have a central person in pavement because of the scale of the endeavor, there is no need to have the same model for all assets. For example, a $35,000 budget for guardrails requires less sophistication.

Existing institutional culture (e.g. the organization's shared goals, understanding of responsibility and the decision making process, personal relationships) cannot be discounted when implementing Asset Management as the new way of "doing business."